Heels Christ, The Video
Fierce.
Spotlight: John Mellencamp's Charity Work
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[image: John Mellencamp]
Mellencamp helped found Farm Aid, and, along with Willie Nelson and Neil
Young, spoke about the issues with elected officials in W...
2 days ago
Since I commented over at Metro's blog and linked back to this piece I thought I'd leave my reaction here:
ReplyDeleteYawn.
Hahahaha, cool.
ReplyDeleteFor me, it's the message because what I see are way too many women here beholden to silly trends. Not that we're exempt from such silliness in the States, but it's okay to thumb your nose at it in the States. Here not so much and I think women really need to have the choice not to follow the crowd too.
I understood the point they were trying to get across, but there was dissonance between the message of the speakers and the visual of the girl on the cross in the jesus-christ-pose.
ReplyDeleteIt felt more like art students trying to think of the most controversial image to pin their message to than people who had actually thought through the metaphor. The jesus image is so overdone it lacks the power and effectiveness that the messengers seem to be seeking. The most suffering the woman appeared to be in was the lack of clothing on a cold November day.
I consider myself feminist in the equality sense of the word, but I find no resonance with this piece of (so-called) performance art. It really doesn't seem to have elicited a reaction from the audience other than what would be given a car wreck. Art is created to provoke a reaction (of various kinds and at various levels), and I really feel that this (at least from what the video captured) was less than the spectacular, revolutionary event it was promoted as.
Right, but it sounds like you're trying to convince me. I don't disagree per se. I just don't care enough to view it through a critical lens mainly because I don't claim to have the depth of understanding on the topic. The extent of my art goes to being a pretty good sketch artist, but I stopped exploring that around grade school.
ReplyDeleteI get that it was the most predictable image. But I'm not feeling the need to engage in critical theory on the piece.
For me, it's more about the message. I'm actually not expecting haute art. But, yes, I get that since it was touted as such then it's a let down.
I just don't expect much when something is billed as haute anything here in Korea. Some might get angry at me for saying that, but Korea is still very much developing and still has yet to reach a peak in many areas. Art, I think, is one of them. Sometimes I'm pleasantly suprised, but most times it's nowhere near the level it was built up to be.
Here, where it's so common that women just imitate, I think it's a good message. I don't have the knowledge or desire to debate the art because I'm more about the message. Although, yes, with the stronger and more powerful the art, the stronger the message. It's just you've got to take it to the source and that's not me ;)
I'm always trying to convince people ;) but that's beside the point. I, like you, probably wouldn't have cared to get the critical lens out if I weren't asked to. That said, I think we're much in the same place on this.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the message is important (and hence my disappointment at its lack of clarity). I think the whole idea (and this was something I only read a few days ago, but it resonates) that Dr. Horace H. Underwood puts forth about the preference for loyalty over honesty in Korean culture (vs. the Western reversal of that preference) comes into play. (This little box for comment typing is awkward for this conversation.) This loyalty- through imitation, or loyalty to the status quo, to society- seems to come into conflict with honesty- or how women really want to live.
Maybe?
Link to Dr. Underwood's ideas:
http://mckinneyconsulting.com/content/view/65/28/
Re the theory, possibly, but I know that two movers behind the project aren't Koreans ;-)
ReplyDelete